K.G. Subramanyan, one of the most revered Indian artists, a beloved teacher and a guide to several generations of artists who followed him, must have had a special association with Vikram Bachhawat’s Aakriti Art Gallery. He inaugurated the gallery at Kolkata more than a decade ago, and his last solo — though it was not meant to be such — is currently on view at the gallery’s Delhi space in Lado Sarai. The show, titled “Sketches, Scribbles, Drawings and Recent Works by K.G. Subramanyan,” was planned long ago. Comprising an exhaustive display of works from his own collection spread over two floors of the gallery, the show has now become historic because Mani Da, as he was fondly addressed by the art fraternity, passed a month before its inauguration on July 30, at the age of 92. “The timing has been such that many thought it is a remembrance show. But we had been working on it for so long and he would have come to inaugurate it. Just a month prior to that, on June 29, he passed away. We were actually in a dilemma whether to go ahead with the exhibition or not, but Uma (his daughter) asked us not to postpone it. She said that Mani Da too would have preferred the same,” shares Vikram Bachhawat, the gallery director. The legendary artist passed away in Baroda, a city that had become his home when he was invited by the Department of Fine Arts of the M.S. University to teach in 1951. The most outstanding aspect of the exhibition is that it beautifully showcases the prolific oeuvre of Mani Da. His distinctive palette that fuses unusual colors in a purposefully incongruous melange draws the onlooker and leads into the profound career of the man who is a legend for diminishing barriers between various genres of art — Subramanyan produced equally profusely as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, muralist, terracotta artist, and writer. Not many are known to have handled pink and blue, turquoise and red, ochre and purple, green and brown and such combinations with as much finesse and grace as comes across in his work. Of special interest are his reverse paintings, a genre that he started experimenting with in 1970s and continued to work in right till the very end. Examples from 2015 are aplenty. Juxtaposed are the ink on paper drawings and gouache on paper drawings in a smaller format. The ones that he made after a visit to China are an ode to the traditional Chinese ink paintings. The exhibition is a rare opportunity to understand K.G. Subramanyan’s art and why he was held in such high esteem by anyone with whom he came in contact. One feels inadequate even attempting a review because his career — and the impact he had on the artists of succeeding generations — were attributes that cannot be summed by any glowing prose. It would be worthwhile to pick up some of his writings that are on display and sale at the exhibition. Subramanyan, who wrote abundantly, penned timeless pieces on various issues that concern the world of art. Most of his books were published by Seagull Books that has also helped in presenting the current exhibition with Aakriti Art Gallery through The Seagull Foundation for the Arts. “Sketches, Scribbles, Drawings and Recent Works by K.G. Subramanyan” is on view at Aakriti Art Gallery, F-208/1, Old M.B. Road, Lado Sarai, New Delhi, through August 27. Visit www.aakritiartgallery.com
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